license suggestions?

[phil hunt]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:32:13 GMT, Lee Morgan <python at lee-morgan.net> wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>Forgive my naivety, but ...
>
>Has anyone proposed the idea of having a timebomb license?
>
>Similar to drug companies control of new drugs to a market. ie you get
>8 years to develop and market your new drug but after that its open
>season. (I'm not wholly certain how this works - and 2 years or less is
>probably more applicable for software).

I've advocated that idea on Usenet previously.

>Wouldn't this prevent shrewd business men like Gates gaining runaway
>monopolies and yet allow commercial r&d to contribute to technological
>innovation? ie You get 2 years to recoup your investment and then the
>license drops to GPL or something.

Indeed. it has been used commercially by Alladin bto produce Ghostscript.

>Also this would probably require legislating software companies -
>which I can't imagine happening.

The copyright term for software could be limited to, say, 
10 years.


-- 
## Philip Hunt ## philh at comuno.freeserve.co.uk ##